Beyond the Ivory Tower: Social Responsibilities of the by Derek Bok

By Derek Bok

Derek Bok examines the advanced moral and social concerns dealing with glossy universities at the present time, and indicates ways that would enable the educational establishment either to serve society and to proceed its fundamental challenge of educating and research.

Reviews:

An vital treatise. the 1st critical try when you consider that Clark Kerr's 1963 The makes use of of the college to investigate the position of the collage in glossy society...The e-book serves as a kick off point for what's more likely to be an important collage debate within the decade forward. (Los Angeles occasions booklet Review)

A reasoned, compassionate and eventually conservative view of the university's ethical starting place and accountability to society...[Bok] expresses his radical trust within the necessity of educational freedom whereas noting the strings which are hooked up to that freedom.. As a coarse roadmap of 1 approach universities can proceed...this booklet is a catalyst and successful. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Bok "brings to the duty a keenly analytical brain and an acute sensitivity to the configurations of institutional energy and clash. (New York occasions publication Review)

Discerning and informative... his publication speaks additionally to the tax-payers, mom and dad and philanthropists who pay for education, and the firms and shoppers who've a turning out to be stake in university-based examine. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Derek Bok offers a very good written, considerate and cogent research of a few of the main complicated and emotional matters earlier than larger schooling at the present time. (Washington put up ebook global)

Dozens of up-to-date and new case stories express the platforms studying association version in motion and illustrate how 5 detailed subsystems--learning, association, humans, wisdom, and technology--support one another to augment the standard and impression of studying.

The impression of Sept. 11 on Psychology and schooling is the 5th quantity of the six-volume sequence The Day that modified every little thing? edited by way of Matthew J. Morgan. The sequence brings jointly from a huge spectrum of disciplines the prime thinkers of our time to mirror on the most major occasions of our time.

Additional info for Beyond the Ivory Tower: Social Responsibilities of the Modern University

Sample text

The ideas advanced in this chapter may seem plausible in the- 32 Basic Academic Values ory, but they often prove unpopular when a particularly heated controversy arises. In trying to explain these principles to a hostile audience, one frequently encounters some extreme hypothetical case put forth to test the strength of one's convictions. What if a ruthless deposed tyrant happened to be an outstanding theoretical physicist? What if a profoundly insightful philosopher was known to have presided over a Nazi concentration camp?

In neither instance will the university run any risk of infringing a professor's freedom to express his beliefs. As a result, the institution is entitled to consider whether the adverse effects of hiring such professors will outweigh the contributions they make by exploring and expounding their chosen field of knowledge. Reasonable people will differ in resolving these questions, and the final decision may require the most delicate assessment of the circumstances in each case. But the underlying principle seems clear and should closely parallel the standard applicable to genuine cases of academic freedom.

Kissinger might Academic Freedom 35 have appealed to faculty members and students who were not only aggrieved by the war but eager to take some tangible step to make their dissatisfactions felt. Be that as it may, excluding Dr. Kissinger would scarcely have served to rectify the government's mistakes in Vietnam or to prevent similar occurrences in the future, for universities llave no way of imposing their standards of behavior on the nation. Thus one is at a loss to discover a compelling social purpose that would justify an administration in disregarding the normal principles of academic freedom and excluding a scholar whom it considered to be the ablest candidate for a position on the faculty.